College football is right around the corner, and soon tens of thousands of Gopher fans will be flocking downtown for games on Saturdays this fall. The same can be said for college football towns across America, and while these scenes can be fun and festive, they can also bring out some dangerous and reckless behaviors. One such behavior is driving while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
We love combining sports and criminal law – just look at our previous March Madness DUI brackets – so we were intrigued when we came across an infographic by Davis Law Group, P.S. in Seattle that examined just how dangerous the roads are in some college football towns. For their analysis, they looked at the county-level DUI crash data between 2013 and 2017 in counties that are home to or neighbor a Sporting News Top 25 college football team. They then took the number of annual drunk driving fatalities and divided it by (total population/100,000) to get the number of drunk driving fatalities per 100,000 people.
College Football Drunk Driving Map
So which Top 25 schools rank the highest for most drunk driving fatalities? Take a look at the infographic below.
As you can see, South Carolina takes the top spot, with 7.45 drunk driving fatalities per 100,000. Rounding out the top ten were:
2. Oklahoma State – 6.96
3. LSU – 6.42
4. Clemson – 5.46
5. Alabama – 5.06
6. Florida State – 5.02
7. Texas – 4.76
8. Auburn – 4.13
9. Central Florida – 3.75
10. Penn State – 3.68
The school with the lowest drunk driving fatality rate in the Top 25? That would be the University of Michigan, the school where Avery went for his undergraduate degree. Here’s one time where we’re glad to see Michigan at the bottom of the Top 25 poll!
For more information about the study, swing on over to Davis Law Group’s website, and if you end up in trouble in the Twin Cities this college football season, be sure to reach out to Avery Appelman for all your criminal defense needs.
